I have an increasing number of pumpkins in my garden - more than I or my guests shall be able to eat. So this evening...- Cut the pumpkin into crescents - two per person, or three if narrow- In a…Continue

I almost always have a cereal of some kind. I particularly like porridge - that’s what you call "oatmeal" if you are American - and have it about every third day. There are a lot of opinions about…Continue

My cooking is largely a matter of seeing what I have left in the fridge, safe and garden and putting it together one way of another. Here’s what I cooked this evening. Ingredients I aubergine,…Continue

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Here in the USA we celebrated our special day of over consumption. Rather I should say we kick off our month and half long season of over consumption. Usually, for the past 10 years, I take my Thanksgiving meal in the hospital cafeteria. Since I have no family I volunteer to work (I was a paid staff chaplain) on that day so the other chaplains who have families could be at home. This year since I'm retired I was invited to a young couple's home in my new home town of Syracuse, NY. I missed the institutional food, the canned turkey, the over cooked vegetables, the canned cranberry sauce overly sweet, and most of all I missed talking to families and staff who were either there working or visiting loved ones. Yes occasionally there were deaths, death knows no holiday, and those are hard times, sad times. I am still discerning whether I will sign on with the hospital here to do on-call work as needed. I am leaning more towards seeing what I can contribute to the prisons and jails here in Syracuse.

For Christmas I have no plans, it is a day I like to spend either watching Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. This year I do believe it will be LotR. For New Years this year I will begin a new tradition by going to Buffalo and joining with the young novice priest there and his fledgling sangha. I also plan on driving over to Niagara Canada as I hear they do a bang up good job of decorating for the holidays.

I've spent Christmas in London, wonderful holiday spirit there, Paris, the year I was there was the year of the terrorist attacks in several locations. Christmas was subdued that year and I was able to go to each of the locations and offer prayers for the smooth and peaceful transition of the victims and families. Christmas in Tokyo one year was a rather bazaar experience, the stores were open and life went on as normal with signs of Joy Holiday and Happy Joy, and other weird combinations of traditional English salutations. So Canada will be a nice addition to Christmas in foreign places.

I wish each of you who reads this a joyful holiday season to include Bodhi Day the enlightenment of the Buddha, making Buddhism the religion with a legitimate claim to a tree at this time of year.

Born: September 13, 1919, London, United KingdomDied: October 10, 2018

Mary was a dear friend and inspiration. I first met her when she came to a meditation class I was leading. Her husband had recently died and she was grieving. She did not need meditation, she just needed to grieve and that be OK, which it definitely was, but she continued to come to meetings and made a…

I am currently leading courses on Buddhist psychology here in Seoul, Korea, but as I am putting the course onto this site as we go along, members of La Ville au Roi (Eleusis) are also responding so it is a bit as though the course is going on in several countries at the same time which is nice.

For fifteen years the writer Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in the Gulag for participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” He endured six of those years enslaved in the gold mines of Kolyma, one of the coldest and most hostile places on earth. While he was awaiting sentencing, one of his short stories was…